


Monsters

by insomniac7809



Series: Kathleen Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Spacer (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 13:30:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7270198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insomniac7809/pseuds/insomniac7809
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes, across the course of the Mass Effect timeline, about monsters and people who fight monsters.</p><p>My entry for MEBB 2016. Props and thanks to ContinuousSpectrum, who brought Kathleen to life, and to AzzyDarling for organizing the occasion!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monsters

 

2161, Arcturus Station

There's a little girl named Kathy in a bed on the sunward side of the ring, sitting awake and afraid. She has red hair and green eyes, fair skin that's barely been exposed to sunlight a day in her life. She's sitting in the dark because lights out is at nineteen thirty and she knows her daddy will be checking. She's awake because she's afraid of monsters.

She's afraid, and she's angry at herself for being afraid, and she's angry at all the grown-ups who tell her she shouldn't be afraid because monsters aren't real.

Monsters are real.

She knows it.

 

 

 

2177, Akuze

Shepard's in the middle of a reddish-brown sand desert on a planet that she'd never heard of until the orders came in, and she had been sleeping in her hardsuit when the screaming started. Now she's looking at a Mako-class tank folded in half in a crater in the middle of the campsite, and she's trying to pull her people into some kind of organization while she tries to figure out what the hell is going on.

She sees Toombs and Bass on the run, and an Ops Chief in motion outranks a 2nd Lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on. She hurries to join them, ducks into cover with the pair of them behind a barricade. “Status report, Chief.”

“LT!” Bass is watching what's left of the tank sitting in the crater, while a cordon of marines hold position around it. “Thought you'd miss the fun. Big motherfucker came out of the ground, started tearing up the armor. Don't know what it is yet, but Louie Rico is having us circle the thing, keep it contained while he gets the heavy guns in position.” He indicates the hills overlooking the campsite. “So now we're waiting here to give it hell if it tries to leave.”

“Where is it?” Shepard peers over the barricade, looking at the crater. “It back below the ground?”

“Ayup. So now we're holing up and waiting for it to show its ugly face.” Bass looks at her with that big grin of his. “And waiting on your order. Ma'am.”

“Can the sass, Chief. Hole up here, wait for it to show its face, and give it hell.”

“Aye-aye, Ma'am-”

And then there's an explosion from her feet, earth and rocks spraying around a mass of tentacles and plates and bright electric blue, and a chitin blade as long as a car whips across her face, and everything is pain and darkness.

 

 

2186, Earth

The monsters are here at last.

The sky is on fire, and the streets are full of them, things that used to be humans and batarians, with their hearts and their minds replaced by motors and circuits, rounding up people who can't fight back. She sees gunfire in the buildings, she sees blood on the streets. She sees the Reapers walking on the ground on humanity's homeworld, huge and black and uncaring, and where they step, everything burns.

 _Our numbers will darken the sky of every world_ , Soverign had told her. _You cannot escape your doom._

Soverign had died screaming, before it could bring the rest of them from the darkness beyond the edge of the galaxy. But they're here now. Everything she's done to stop them, and three years later, they're here.

She remembers the images from the Protheans, a memory left buried for fifty thousand years, to give her a warning. She carries the memories of the end of their empire, death coming to them in every corner of the galaxy, a civilization that dwarfed hers reduced to ash and dust by the things she's watching now. She's bled and killed and fought and **died** and sacrificed everything she could to delay this day.

Three years.

_We are the end of everything._


	2. Scars

2157, Shanxi

Hannah Shepard has been on the surface of Shanxi for nine hours with a pistol, seven days' rations, and a pair of binoculars. She's been maintaining radio silence since she pulled herself out of the wreckage of her fighter; she can't know what the invaders are capable of, and until the marines make their landing, the planet is alien territory. She's seen their ships in orbit, harsh angles and interlocking plates; she's seen their fighters, like insects with their stubby little wings jutting back from the back. She's seen the abandoned habs with the colonists forced out and the shattered ruins of city blocks that the aliens bombarded from orbit.

Now she's seeing them. She's hiding in the woods, looking through her binocs while she cowers in the shade of one of Shanxi's oversized bushes. Any other time, this would be a charming scene of unspoiled nature, a small clearing around the gentle curve of a brook. But this is the war, and she's found the enemy, standing guard over two human prisoners, fighter pilots like her shot down in the first wave of dogfights over the colony. The aliens are moving into positions at the edges of the clearing, forming a perimeter.

Four of them, all sharp edges and spines, standing two meters tall at least, thin and sickly. They walk like men, but their faces are reptilian, covered in plates suggesting the shape of a skull, with pigment in patterns along the edges like war paint, under a crown of spines protruding around their crest. A pair of flat mandibles where their cheeks should be, that almost—but not quite—hide their sharp teeth. 

They're monsters.

One of the humans tries to run, hands still bound in front of him. (Is it Wu? She can't tell, can't make him out to be sure.) One of the monsters points, the others turn. One of them takes aim with a long rifle, lining up a shot.

She can't speak. She can't move. She wants to shout, but she's too far, she can't give away her position. All she can do is watch the monsters at their work.

The human— _Wu, she knows it's Wu_ —goes down in a spray of red. It takes two seconds for Shepard to hear the crack of the shot.

She hides, and she waits, and she hopes. She hopes that the rest of the Alliance will be here soon, to keep her from falling in the monsters' claws. She hopes that they come and kill each and every one of the bastards. She hopes she'll have the chance to see her daughter again.

2177, SSV Dubai, Arcturus Stream

She's back aboard the Dubai, laid up in a bed in the sickbay, raw meat held together with bandages and medical tape. Akuze is behind her, and with her, and it always will be.

Doctor Picardo is letting her use a mirror. Her face is split in half and held together with staples and artificial scar tissue, a red line across her right eye, from the eyebrow, over her nose, and into a ruined mess at the corner of her left cheek and jaw.

“You'll have full use of your eye again, before too long,” he's explaining. A bald little man, she doesn't want him in the room. But better him than her superiors, asking for answers. And better him than being left alone with the memories. “We'll be bonding a prosthetic to your jawbone and replacing the teeth, and using a synthetic mesh on your face to encourage tissue regrowth. But there's going to be scars.”

He says this as though she didn't know.

2185, Normandy SR-2, Sahrabarik System

She's looking at the reflection in her new, too-huge quarters, and the woman in the mirror moves her hand over her mouth.

The new Normandy is bigger, sleeker than the ship that burned above Alchera. The people in it, in the Cerberus white and yellow, are strangers. Tali left her, went back to the Migrant Fleet and sent her to go back onto a ship, surrounded by the enemy, with a goddamn artificial intelligence watching and listening from the walls. Even Joker and Chakwas... if they've signed on with Cerberus, they're strangers too. 

The woman in the mirror is another stranger. The scar from her right eyebrow to her left cheek is gone; instead, her face is scored with glowing red lines in curves on her cheeks, around her eyes. There's something not human under the skin, warm and smooth and mottled like melted plastic under her fingers as the woman in the mirror runs her fingers at the edge of her skin. Her eyes are glowing red, like a demon from a storybook. Like Saren. Like a monster.

'Scars,' Lawson had said. ('Meat and tubes,' Taylor had said. God, what is she?)

 _Daddy, what did they do to me?_  



	3. Service

2170, Arcturus Station

Kathleen has been waiting for word for days now. She's been going through the motions of school, but she keeps realizing that she hasn't been listening to the teachers, to her friends. She's waiting for news about her father.

More than anything, she wants to know. Being away is nothing new—she's been a navy brat from birth, and on the rare occasion that her parents are both home at the same time, she usually spends her time counting the days until one of them is gone again. Both of them together is more than she can deal with. But they always, _always_ check in. To complain about their superiors, to laugh about their friends on base, to give her grief about her grades, to not-too-subtly threaten her boyfriend or girlfriend and laugh when her face turns red.

To let her know they're alive.

Her father hasn't sent word in days. Something must be wrong. But she doesn't know what, she doesn't know what's happened, and until she does she can't do anything but sit in the empty quarters and wait. If she knew, it would be better, either way.

She's watching another documentary on twenty-first century wars on Earth when the door chimes. She jumps at the noise, and has to take a moment to calm herself. Slow her breathing, put her composure together piece by piece. The door chimes a second time, and she's ready, but she's still just standing there, hand in front of the door. 

A third chime.

She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry. She finally pushes the release, and the door slides open, and she sees a Lieutenant standing in his dress uniform with a stern expression, hands clasped behind his back.

And her chest is tight and her eyes are burning and she realizes that it was so, so much better not to know, to be able to hope, that she should have savored every second that she could pretend there would be anything else coming but an officer with a stern expression asking if he could come inside, because he's afraid he has some news.

2172, Earth

“Raise your right hand.”

She does, and in every direction, the men and women in uniform do the same.

“Repeat after me: I, state your name.”

She adds her voice to the chorus around her. “I, Kathleen Jennifer Shepard!”

“Do hereby, as you prefer, swear, assert, affirm, or avow.”

“Do hereby assert, affirm, and avow!”

“To obey the orders of the Systems Alliance Parliament.”

“To obey the orders of the Systems Alliance Parliament!”

“Above any national, colonial, or planetary government.”

“Above any national, colonial, or planetary government!”

“To obey the orders of the superior officers appointed over me.”

“To obey the orders of the superior officers appointed over me!”

“In compliance with Naval regulations and the uniform code of military justice.”

“In compliance with Naval regulations and the uniform code of military justice!”

“To defend the citizens of the Systems Alliance.”

“To defend the citizens of the Systems Alliance!”

“Against all threats, human and otherwise.”

“Against all threats, human and otherwise!”

“As a citizen-soldier of the Systems Alliance Navy.”

“As a citizen-soldier of the Systems Alliance Navy!”

“Until such time as I am lawfully released of my oath.”

“Until such time as I am lawfully released of my oath!”

“Lower your hands, marines. And let me be the first to offer my congratulations. You've done me proud.”

2170, Antirumgone

Lieutenant Marcus Shepard is on a miserable hunk of ice and rock called Antirumgone, which the jarheads call 'Planet Sparrow' for no reason he's ever been able to figure out. The trace atmosphere outside his suit is pure poison, and he's carrying a light pack in almost two gees local gravity. He's standing on an ice sheet covered in dead batarians, trying to triangulate the best path back to the four-eyed bastards' base camp.

“Lieutenant,” Rice calls in over the suit comm. “We got a couple survivors. Singh and Gordon picked them up. What's the order?”

He makes his way to where Rice and the other marines are standing guard over two more of the pirates. It's hard to show uncertainty with a face covered by the environmental helmet, but Gordon is doing his best. Shepard is relaxed as he approaches, stepping over one of the bodies still on the ground. “You picking up some strays, marines?”

“Sir.” Singh steps forward, gun ready. “Two prisoners. Surrendered after we took out the listening post.”

Marcus nods, and looks to Rice. She shakes her head. He laughs, and crouches to meet one of the batarians in the lower pair of eyes. He has his sidearm in hand, held casually, aimed at the ground. “Smart. You going to keep being smart, blinkies? How many left in the main base?”

“We don't need to tell you anything.” The batarian's face plate is transparent, and Marcus can see its fangs bared. “I demand medical attention for my companion, in accordance with your rules on treatment toward prisoners of-”

The butt of Shepard's pistol knocks it to the ground. He stands over it, boot on its neck while it thrashes and grasps at his armored calf. He stands still, and he takes the time to line up the sights right in the middle of its four eyes. A sharp kick in his hand, and the batarian's thrashing stops.

“You aren't soldiers. You're pirates and slavers. So talk fast.” He points his pistol at the other batarian, while Gordon, from the sound of things, is sick inside his helmet. “How many left at the main base? Did the post alert them before we hit?”

The batarian is hurt—from the looks of things, it does need that medical attention, frozen blood showing around emergency suit patches. It's gasping for air as it looks between Shepard and its recently deceased companion. “Twelve,” it gets out. “Techs sent word as soon as we saw you. They'll be waiting.”

“Good boy.” The shot to this one goes right in the breadbasket. Another into the crown when the batarian doubles over. And a kick to the stomach, just for the hell of it.

“Alright, marines.” Marcus stands to address the troops. “We're outnumbered two to one and they're waiting for us. Don't know about you, but I like those odds. Singh, get the drones in the air, come at them from the southeast. Dubois, Orikasa, sniper positions. Everyone else, we're coming in from the northwest. Move out.”

“Double time, marines! Haul ass like you got a place to be!” Rice sends them hustling. Over the private link, she laughs into Marcus's ear. “These FNGs. Prisoners? On Sparrow?”

Marcus laughs back with her. “The hell do they get this shit, right? You want to give Wong some time with the recently departed?”

“Oh, hell yeah.” Rice watches as PFC Wong starts working at the helmet of one of the dead batarians. “The boy's an artist.”


	4. Beginnings

2180, Sur'kesh

“Professor. I think I have something.”

Maelon is crouched over fields of scrolling data, tissue samples and projections and simulations at every angle. Mordin Solus moves away from an array that dwarfs Maelon's and leans over his shoulder.

Maelon doesn't explain, and doesn't need to. Mordin takes in the changes at a glance, and places a hand on his chin. “Interesting. Hormonal balance—no, would interfere with—ah. Accounted for. Interesting. Promising! Need to run tests on tissue samples, concept testing on varren. Can begin processes immediately. Results in three days, possibly less.”

Maelon can't help himself. “If the contagion spreads according to the models we ran this afternoon-”

“Timetable reduced into acceptable parameters. Introduce into population centers, spread through sufficient proportion of the population. Outliers statistically insignificant. Implications promising.”

The implications are something Maelon has been trying not to consider. He falls into silence for a moment. Mordin watches him, blinks.

“Uncertain? Discussed this. Consensus. Krogan population growth unsustainable. Second Rebellions inevitable. Preservation of Genophage only acceptable outcome. Protect galaxy from krogan. Protect krogan from galaxy. Fine work, Maelon. Necessary work.”

“Of course, Professor. Thank you.”

Praise from Doctor Solus is rarer than astatine. Maelon takes it to heart, and returns to numbers and protean chains, epidemiology reports, and he tries to tell himself he doesn't feel like a monster at all.

2183, The Citadel

Shepard is talking to a turian cop named Garrus Vakarian in a ward clinic, surrounded by bodies. The hostage is safe and none of the corpses are people she liked, so this is a pretty good start to her day, even if it hadn't given her her best lead on the monster behind the charlie foxtrot on Eden Prime.

But now the turian wants to come along. She almost says no. He's a hell of a shot—she's seen that much—but the thought of having a turian watching her back puts her teeth on edge.

But she has to be smart if she's going to win this. She's already trying to take on an enemy with the Council's support, years of training, an army, and that damn ship she saw over the colony. She has two marines, emotional support from Anderson and that weasel Udina, and the truth, which never counts for what it should. A C-Sec cop with a grudge against Saren could be a help. She doesn't think it was a show when he fought his boss to keep pushing.

And if it was a show, and this cuttlebone is just looking for the chance to stab her in the back, it's better to have him close enough to deal with when it comes to it.

“Alright, turian. You're in.” She leans up and in, trying her best to be imposing from a position at his neck. “But I'll be watching you.”

It's not a threat, it's a promise.

2172, Arcturus Station

Kathy is standing, back straight, like she's been practicing in the mirror. She has her hair up in a tight bun, the way her mother always has. She has the official letter folded, crisp and clean, in her left hand, and her jaw set like her father used to do when he was with the other marines.

She's holding her right hand at the door, and it's shaking. 

She's going to be a soldier, and she can't bring herself to push the open function on a goddamn door and walk into her own quarters. She just keeps on going over the same prepared speech, and every time it sounds worse in her own mind, until she starts to think that maybe she should just run and hide until the transport to Earth picks up.

Or maybe she should just hide forever, stow away on a freighter out to the Terminus systems and disappear, maybe this was the worst mistake she's made in her life, maybe she should stop pretending she's going to be a soldier if she can't bring herself to move her hand a centimeter and _open the damn door_ -

And it slides open, and her mother is sitting at the little table in the living room, in front of a brown cake with a big wax 18 stuck on the top.

“There you are.” Hannah Shepard stands, smile on her face, and takes a step closer. “I'm sure you have something planned with your friends, but I thought we could at least have the cake before you left. You're late.”

Eyes up. Focus. She puts her hands behind her back, and forces herself to look into her mother's eyes. “I took a the long way home today. I stopped at the recruitment station after class.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

Kathleen's mouth is open; this isn't how this was supposed to go. There's supposed to be yelling, or pleading, or anger, or something. She tries to find her feet, skip to the next part of her speech that might apply. “I've signed, and I'll be shipping out to Earth on the first boat off after I graduate. You can't do anything to stop me.”

“Of course I can't.” Hannah starts to cut the cake, laying out a plate on Kathleen's side of the table. “It's real chocolate. And real butter. Don't you want a slice?”

All at once, Kathleen deflates. Her shoulders sag, her posture slumps, and her left hand starts squeezing her right wrist until it hurts. “...I'm joining the Marines. Like dad did.”

“I know, Kathy.” Hannah's eyes close for a moment, but she's still smiling, faintly. She reaches a hand to touch the ring on her finger. “I'd ask you to think about being a pilot, but I've seen you drive.”

Kathleen's face is hot, and her words are backed up, tripping over each other to say nothing or anything. “How the hell are you so calm, Mom? Five years, every time this comes up, you've tried to stop me. This is happening. I'll be in Sidney in two months.”

“I could never stop you, sweetheart. I was trying to convince you to do something else. You could do anything, Kathy. You could be anything.”

“I...” She holds up the paper, her terms of enlistment, stamped and signed and sealed. “This is what I want to do. This is who I want to be.”

“I don't want to fight, Kathy. There are going to be enough chances to fight. Even for you. Make a wish.”

The wax candle isn't lit. (Open fires in an oxygen-rich environment are a safety hazard.) But Kathleen leans down to blow at the top of the cake all the same, feeling as stupid doing it as she has every year since she turned twelve. 

She feels her mother's arms around her, and she tries to stand straight and proud, like the soldier she wants to be.

“Happy birthday, Kathy. I hope you know we're proud of you.”


	5. Aim

2062, Sakharov Station

“Straighten your arms, Kathy.”

She does, shifting a little, and her daddy's hands move to her shoulders to correct her posture. Legs slightly apart, shoulders forward, hands tight on the grip of her daddy's pistol. She has oversized goggles on her face and oversized earplugs that let her hear her daddy's voice, but block out the loud noises coming from the range.

“Now,” he's saying, “look at the back sight, here.” He points at the raised notches toward the back of the pistol, and moves his finger down the barrel toward the front. “Now look at the front sight. Point the gun so that it's pointing toward the circle in the middle.”

She holds the heavy gun in her hands, and focuses on the paper at the end of the wall. It's a picture of a turian without its helmet on, so she can see its face. All spines and spikes and teeth. She points it toward the very middle, and holds it there.

“Now, don't look at the target, look at the front sight. Then put the front of your finger on the trigger. Don't move anything else, just squeeze slowly until it shoots.”

Kathy sucks in air through her teeth, tensing up. Just like he told her, she stares at the bump on the front of the gun and slowly squeezes the trigger until-

There's a flash and a 'BANG' and the gun pulls itself up and flies right into her face and her nose and then she lets it go and it's clattering on the floor and she lets out a screech and her daddy's on his knees, trying to get her hands off her face.

“Oh, Jesus, Kathy. Are you hurt?”

“I'b okay.” She blink back tears because she remembers what Dad said before, Shepards don't cry, and so she isn't going to start crying now even though her nose and her eyebrow hurt worse than when she fought Timmy Dover and he punched her in the face. “I'm okay.”

“We can stop now. Put these back, we've got a big day for you.”

“No!”

He looks at her, a hand on her shoulder, and reaches the other hand to wipe at her face. “You're bleeding, sweetheart. We're done for the day.”

“'m fine.” Kathy blinks again, keeping from crying. “Show me how to do it right.”

Daddy looks at her a moment, and then he starts to smile. “Alright. You gonna give the cuttlebone what for? Show him what Shepards are made of?”

“Yes sir!”

“My girl.” He musses her hair while she steps back into the spot, hands her the gun. “Hold on tight this time. Brace for the kick, but don't flinch. Hold it steady.”

It's Kathleen Shepard's eighth birthday. She points the front sight at the monster down the range and takes a deep breath.

2183, Agebinium

The pirates are swarming over the Mako, presumably trying to break through Alliance military encryption and get their very own tank. It should take them at least six hours, and Shepard doesn't expect them to have anything like that.

She's standing on the top of a mountain, watching them, and she's in a bad mood. Because someone else is touching her baby. Because someone set a trap by burying a nuke in a cave in the below-freezing no-atmo end of nowhere in the Voyager cluster, and because, her mission remit having apparently expanded from tracking down a rogue Spectre and the civilization-ending monstrosity he works for to rushing off to the end of nowhere on errands for Hackett, the trap worked. 

Because she left Kaidan Alenko to die on Virmire and pulled out aliens over an Alliance marine.

Because the aliens in the crew are her friends, and her girlfriend, and she still catches herself thinking like that, and she's starting to hate herself for it.

“Tali, take cover. Garrus, long rifle. Look out for countersnipers, and wait for it.” She pulls her own sniper rifle off her back, and starts taking stock of the opposition.

She takes her shot, and Garrus takes his, and the little figures at the bottom of the ravine are scurrying like ants, firing wildly into the air toward her.

Normally, sniping from a stationary position as exposed as the top of a mountain is suicidal, but the opening rounds took out the pirate snipers before they could line up their shots. Anything they still have is too far out of range to hit with anything but dumb luck, and their kinetic shields are more than enough to handle a couple stray shots. So it's just a matter of lining up the shot, one by one, adjusting for range, and-

“Commander, watch out!”

Garrus' voice in her ear. She whips her head around (hate fighting in a helmet, no peripheral vision at all) and sees nothing. “Vakarian, what-”

The muted crack of his rifle. “Five to three! I'm killing you here!”

“...you warned me about your _kill count_?”

“I'm warning you that, at this rate, you aren't losing. You're embarrassing yourself.”

“I'm taking out the krogan!” Another shot at the target—direct hit, but it's staggered, not down. 

“Six to three, and all that means is you're shooting the biggest target on the field.”

“Krogan take a lot of killing!” Another headshot finally puts the pirate down. “They should count as three, easy.”

“Inflating your stats, Commander? If that's how you got picked for Spectre, then I'm wondering if I should reconsider leaving C-Sec.”

“ _Keelah_ , what is **wrong** with you two?”

And Shepard realizes that she's laughing. For the first time since Virmire, she's enjoying herself, bullets zipping over her head and all. She lines up her next target, takes a breath, and squeezes the trigger.

(Back aboard the _Normandy _, Wrex will confirm that krogan do only count as one.)__

__(Any other kills are tallied in the event of a tie.)_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't like the first half of this chapter. Rewrote a better tie to the second half & renamed it.


	6. Die

2177, Akuze

She wakes up with her face a mess of throbbing pain and hot wet blood, sounds of shooting and screaming from all around. She's looking through her left eye to see White using an omni-tool to deliver another hit of medigel. The pain gets a sudden sharp accent over her eyebrow and she tries to scream, but it's just a wet gurgle and she can feel her lips flapping at a ragged edge, a rush of air through her cheek. White shoves her forehead down and says something about medical staples that she can't quite make out.

“Jesus, Louie.” Toombs is looking down with an expression of horror. “Your face-” he flinches at the sound of an explosion, and Shepard strains her head up to look, sees maybe twelve marines around her in clumps, firing from cover. White pushes her down again, and pushes another staple in through her cheek.

“Not pretty, but it'll hold for a little while.” White stands, and moves a hand under Shepard's armpit, starting to pull her upward. “We need to get back with the rest of the platoon.”

Shepard shakes him off, and tries to find her balance, tries to get a read on the situation. The tank support is smoldering in the remains of base camp, and the ground is covered with bodies—cut to pieces, torn apart, some of them looking like they'd been melted. Blood soaking into the sand, red under the camp lights. Her head swims, and she only just keeps Toombs from having to catch her.

“Louie, you really shouldn't be-”

“Wheri'st.” She can't get her voice to come out right. Her whole face is still throbbing, and she's tottering on her feet; she probes the inside of her mouth with her tongue, tastes the metal of the staples on the inside of her cheek and coppery blood all over her mouth. She's missing teeth, probably part of her jaw-

“Half a click south-southwest.” One of the marines—can't tell who she is, doesn't matter now—indicates the center of the scattered corpses. “Took some fire from heavy weapons team north, came up right in the middle of them. Now Rico and what's left of Jordan's team are trying to-”

 _“FUCK!”_ There's another burst of sand and rock, and there it is again, huge and undulating, with that big blue tongue wrapping around Smith and pulling him into that ring of tentacles. She can still hear him screaming over the radio over the sound of every marine opening fire, and then there's a squealing wail of feedback and Smith cuts off.

“Fa' back! Wesh and out, cover fire as you go! White, Hakim-” She looks around and sees the marines fleeing in a panic, firing blindly if they're firing at all. “God _dammit_ marines, keep together-”

“Shepard!” Toombs shoves her hard, and she's back on the ground when the sand shifts, and another set of tentacles sprouts from the ground at her feet. She scrambles up and over, just fast enough to look Tooombs in the eye as the sand closes around him, down into the dark.

Shepard runs.

2170, Antirumgone

Marcus Shepard is crawling away from the ruins of his shuttle, over a wide patch of greenish ice, warped in a ripple pattern where it melted and refroze as the shuttle made its terminal descent. The wreck is still smoldering behind him, with a pilot and two marines inside, and there's not anything he can do about it. About the best he can do is get a little distance from the crash site and try not to pass out from the pain.

Suit seals are holding, so he's not going to suffocate. Not unless he pulls out the chunk of shrapnel that's about six centimeters into his guts, and lets all the air out the hole it's made in the hardsuit. He's applying medigel, hopefully enough to keep him from bleeding out. But he's not going anywhere in a hurry, that's for goddamn sure.

His helmet's damaged, static on the line, but he can make out voices. “-alive down-? -copy?”

“Rice,” he manages to get out. “Just me here. We hit down hard.”

“-ming back to – you up. Hold tight.”

“Belay. Get the package back to the ship, then worry about me.” He tries to get the helmet radio to clear, checking the omni-tool to fix whatever's loose in the helmet. He isn't sure, but he thinks he can hear an engine working across the ice.

“-that, Lieutenant! We have a read on hostiles moving toward your location.”

“Then you sure as shit aren't bringing the package back down here! Get to the ship, drop off the package, and blast these four-eyed sons of bitches to hell from orbit. That's an order.”

Silent on the line. He wonders if the radio's failed until he hears Rice's voice, crisp and clear. “Aye aye, Shepard. It's been...” Silence, again, except for the sounds of the engine. Definitely closer now. “Well. You know.”

“Yeah.”

He can see the faint spot of light, the shuttle moving off and toward the horizon until it's gone, leaving him to bleed onto this Godforsaken patch of ice and rock and listen to the steady rumble of the truck making its way closer. It's almost on him by the time he thinks of leaving a message for Hannah and Kathy. One more thing left unfinished, but hell—would it be better if they got a message from him fumbling with goodbyes, spouting bullshit about how he got the job done? Hannah will understand. Kathy just might, too.

There's five of them when they arrive, guns in hand. He can't see their faces, but he has an idea of what they'd look like behind the mask. Maybe he shouldn't have let Wong take the eyes off the corpses. Probably wouldn't have made any difference.

“Well come on, you sons of bitches,” he says, forcing himself into a sitting position. He meets the glass eyeholes in the faceplate of the batarian in the lead. “Make it quick.”

They don't.

2183, SSV Kilimanjaro

Human Councilor David Anderson is on the vidcom, but XO Hannah Shepard isn't listening. He's saying things about memorial services, and bereavement leave, and loss.

She stopped listening when he said that Lieutenant Jeff Moreau saw Kathy die in front of him.

She's been waiting for this news for ten years, but that doesn't make it easier. Shepards don't cry, so she's clenching her jaw and running her right thumb over her knuckle, and listening to David talk with her face in a blank set, the one she's spent her whole life perfecting.

"Hannah." The voice on the comm is trying to bring her back to herself, and she isn't sure she can manage right now. But that's the job, after all. What they signed on for. Carrying on.

"Hannah, I don't... I can't pretend to know what you're going through. But for whatever it might mean, your daughter touched a lot of lives. I hope you know that."

"This was my daughter, David." She forces her hands to stop fidgeting, rests them flat on the table. "My little girl."

"I know." He's silent, and she doesn't trust herself to speak. David sighs, and says "I keep wondering what I could have done differently, if I could have posted her somewhere out of the line of fire. But Shepard..."

"There's never been a way to keep her out of trouble. Believe me, David, I know that."

"I'll come to see you soon, Hannah. I'm sorry."

The call ends, leaving only the default background: the stars and wings of the Systems Alliance flag. Hannah stares at the symbol, holding back the sting in her eyes.

She's given thirty-five years, a husband, and her only child to the Alliance. She doesn't know how much she has left.

She raises a hand to her mouth, and bites down on the skin of her knuckle, hard enough that she can taste the blood on her lips. Shepards don't cry.

2172, Earth

Left, right, left, right. Don't lag. Left, right, left, right. Breathe steady. Left, right, left right. Call, response.

“If I die in a combat zo-ne!”

_“If I die in a combat zo-one.”_

“Bo-ox me up and ship me home!”

_“Bo-ox me up and ship me home.”_

“Gi-ive my rifle to another marine!”

_“Gi-ive my rifle to another marine.”_

“It se-erved me well I kept it clean.”

_“It se-erved me well I kept it clean.”_

“Pu-ut me in a set of dress blues!”

_“Pu-ut me in a set of dress blues.”_

“Co-omb my hair and shine my shoes!”

_“Co-omb my hair and shine my shoes.”_

“Pi-in my medals on my chest!”

_“Pi-in my medals on my chest.”_

“Te-ell my mamma I did my best!”

_“Te-ell my mamma I did my best.”_

“Mamma mamma don't you cry-y!”

_“Mamma mamma don't you cry-y.”_

“Every marine gonna do or die!”

_“Every marine gonna do or die.”_


	7. Hopeless

2177, Akuze

Shepard is running.

The sand goes in every direction, in hills and dunes and crests and flats, under a perfectly cloudless night sky. She lost sight of base camp two hours ago, the only signs of life here are her and the sounds coming from under the ground. The wind is bitter cold, whipping on the raw mess of her face, and cutting into her lungs every time she takes a breath. Her face is agony, her head is spinning, her legs are punishing her for every step she tries to take. She can't keep going.

She falls. Her left leg gives, and she's down, sliding down the hill along the sand until she comes to rest in a heap. She struggles for air, looking up at the trail she left. The untouched wilderness of a virginal planet, marked with one set of bloody footprints through the dust. Not fifty. Just one.

She is alone.

The _Dubai_ is on the other side of the planet, and her people—every one of them—they're all dead. On the entire planet, there's only her and the monsters.

She's staring into the endless black sea of stars, and thinking about how she might be more alone than any human being has ever been.

And she's tired. She's so, so tired. It would be easy to let the ground open underneath her, and let herself be pulled down into the dark. Not alone, at least. That's where her people are. Not that getting up would end any differently. All this pain and effort, just to delay it for another few steps. It would be so, so easy.

_And when the hell have you ever gone with easy?_

She has one hand on the ground, forcing herself up. She takes another step. And another.

_Left. Right. Left. Right. Don't lag._

2186, The Citadel

Iyela T'Nar is in her battle gear, and she's watching the door of the Armax Arsenal Arena.

Outside, the Silversun Strip is full of horrors. Screams, and gunfire, and shrieks of things that used to be people. She can see the shapes, shadows and silhouettes, moving through the causeways and swarming at the entrance and pounding at the glass.

Downstairs, in the arena, she's fought these things a hundred times. She's laughed with her friends and watched the recordings, over and over, moments of glory and triumph. Pretending to be a hero.

Those were games. Those were puppets of light and noise. This is real, and it's here, and she's gone cold right to her bones. There are tears running down her cheeks and her blood is pounding in her ears. There's nowhere to run, and nothing for her to do but wait.

She can see one of the shapes moving closer. She knows the silhouette. A Brute. She remembers watching them die a hundred times, dodging and running until it explodes into color and she strikes a pose for the camera-

The thing's bulk smashes through the reinforced windows, and it surges at the head of a tide of half-machine bodies that come at her in a rush, riding at the crest of a wave of shooting and screaming and lumbering flesh and wires.

She screams back, pushing them away with her biotics, firing blindly into the swarm until they're grabbing her, tearing at her, holding her down.

There's no downbeat music, no flashing 'YOU LOSE,' no chance to restart the match.

Just the horde of monsters dragging Iyela T'Nar down into the darkness.

2181, Tuchanka

Mordin Solus is extracting tissue from one of the flesh-pits near the female camp. Night has fallen, and most of the clans are holed up in their camps, ready to fend off a raid.

There's gunfire in the distance, which could mean a dispute or a celebration or a skirmish. Mordin burrows his probe through the topsoil, unconcerned. Gunfire in Tuchanka is as regular at night as insect mating calls on Sur'kesh. Simply part of the local environment. Extremely rare for patrols or fighting to come near the pits.

Under his feet are the stillborn from the camp. Nonviable embryos discarded in piles, and then covered under a thin layer of dirt. No markers, no ceremony. Only a patch of ground where no one visits.

The probe sends its readings to Mordin's hardsuit. Needs time to analyze, but indications nominal. He retracts the probe and places it back with the others.

Ground samples, water samples, soil samples, tissue samples, all showing signs of corrected genophage dispersal. Mordin looks over the irradiated wasteland around him, and, since he knows he's alone, allows himself to sigh.

Protect galaxy from krogan. Protect krogan from galaxy. 

His work. His best work.

Unseen, Mordin slips away, out and into the darkness.


	8. Killer

2176, Elysium

It's very nearly Kathleen Shepard's first time. Her face is flushed, her heart is racing, and her stomach feels like it's about to crawl out through her mouth.

Stuart places a hand on her shoulder. His hand is big, and strong, and her heart beats just that little bit faster when he touches her. He gives that smile of his, white teeth and dark skin, and meets her eyes. “You nervous, Shepard?”

“No,” she lies, reaching to brush his hand off despite herself. “I'm ready for it.”

“Shit yeah,” Alvarado says, “Shepard here's an Alliance princess. Born ready, right?”

“You know it, pipsqueak.”

“Five minutes to touchdown,” comes the pilot's voice in the speaker. “Brace for turbulence.”

The shuttle is off the SSV Midway, sending troops groundside while she and the Argincourt clear the orbit around the colony. Service Chief Shepard has spent three years guarding hallways, standing posts, scouting positions, and busting her ass studying for OCS applications. Now she's sitting in the back of a shuttle, watching AA fire burst through the sky around her, trusting the lives of her and her people in the hands of the woman in the cockpit.

They hit dirt in the middle of what was, from the look of things, a shopping mall before it happened. Now the windows are smashed, and the merchandise is scattered, and the only signs of life are twelve Alliance marines making their way through the rubble. 

They move in silence, taking it like a drill. Room by room, store by store. There's the remains of a dress shop, where the mannequins have been used for target practice; the looted electronics store; the restaurant that looks like it caught a shell, tables and chairs and people scattered around the floor.

( _This is a place where people worked, shopped, lived. And then the monsters came out of the sky and started killing and taking. And we couldn't keep it from happening._ )

Shepard holds up her hand to stop the marines behind her. LADAR has three hostile targets showing in the next room. She takes the wall, and readies a grenade. Stuart and Alvarado take their spot. She holds up three fingers. Then two. 

One.

( _We couldn't stop it from happening. We can keep them from doing it to anybody else._ )

Go. 

The grenade goes in first, and Shepard dives for an overturned table—a coffee shop, the place had been a coffee shop before it happened. Now it's a kill zone, bullets flying, beans blown across the store by the grenade and crunching underfoot where she steps. One of the hostiles is torn to pieces by the marines at the door, and Shepard starts unloading at a batarian behind the bar.

The hostile points an omni-tool at her, and her gun is venting into her face, blaring the heat warning. Voices in the comms coming in fast-

“More hostiles on the way-”

“Reinforcements en route, hold tight-”

“-pard's still in there-”

The batarian is making his way over, pointing its working gun level at her, and until her rifle fixes itself she's left holding a very expensive blunt object.

She can work with that.

She vaults the table, gunfire overloading her shields, and smashes the butt of the gun right in the alien's face. It staggers back, and she's on it, hitting it with her fists and her barrel, batting away its feeble fists, listening to the crunch, crunch of its face with every blow-

-then something hits her from behind, missed it, peripheral vision for shit in the helmet-

- _I'm going to die in a pile of artisinal coffee beans_ -

-somehow her pistol is in her hand and she's pulling the trigger, again and again and again until it's blaring at her, and the turian pirate is collapsing in a spreading puddle of blue.

Her face is burning, and she's breathing hard, and she looks around to see five more marines piling into the room. Stuart has his helmet off, he's puking in the corner, and she's not sure but she thinks Rodriguez is crying.

The Lieutenant makes his way over, looking from Shepard to the corpses on the floor, pushing at the batarian's head with his boot, rolling it to see the remains of its face. “That is one dead blinky, Chief. You alright?”

“Armor took the hit, LT. I'm fine.”

He shakes his head, taking a step closer. “Not what I'm asking. Are you alright?”

She meets his eyes, straightens her spine, and tries to keep from wincing. “I'm fine, Louie. Good to go.”

It's true. In the days after, she'll start to wonder if there's something she has that other people don't, that lets her feel nothing about killing except the thrill of adrenaline and the rush of a win.

At nights, sometimes, she'll wonder if it's something other people has that she doesn't.

And one day, without even noticing, she'll stop.

2186, SSV Normandy

“Three hundred thousand people, Garrus.”

She's lying on the bed, on her side, facing away from him, staring at nothing. He's beside her, one hand on her waist, looking at the back of her head. 

“Just... three hundred thousand _people._ ”

“Shepard.”

“Take thirty people. Thirty dead people, that's about a romantic evening out for us. So I'm imagining thirty dead people, line them up side by side. And then take ten of those rows, maybe pile them up on top of each other. And then we take ten of those piles, and ten of those, and I'm trying to imagine ten of _those_ and I'm not sure I can. Three hundred _thousand_ people.”

He's silent, just running his claws over her side. She makes a noise that couldn't really be mistaken for a laugh. “So I guess you can't ever try to brag about your count again.”

“You used an asteroid and a mass relay. That has to be cheating.”

She makes the not-a-laugh noise again, and finally rolls over to look him in the face. “Three hundred thousand people, Garrus.”

“You told me what happened. Was there a better choice?”

“No.” Shepard looks away again, up toward the ceiling. “If I hadn't done it, the Reapers would be here. Now. They'd be everywhere. I bought us some time. Maybe if I'd brought Thane and Kasumi, we could have gotten some of them out first...”

“But you didn't.”

“But I didn't. And the batarians don't have the ships to evacuate a planet in two days. And they'd have tried to stop me. So I had to kill three hundred thousand people to buy the rest of the galaxy a little more time. So I did. And that... this is just the beginning, isn't it?”

She's looking Garrus in the eyes, and waiting for an answer he doesn't want to give. The silence stretches out, and he breaks first. “...it's going to get worse.”

Shepard nods. She sits up, and slowly, piece by piece, she puts on The Commander face. Pulls herself away from this, and looks ahead.

“Okay.”

2186, Tuchanka

“Mordin. Walk away.”

The building is coming apart around them, and Shepard is pointing a gun at her friend. So she can stop him from undoing one of the worst crimes in history, and keep him from saving a race from extinction. He sighs, eyes looking to the ground, like he's almost as disappointed in her as she is.

“Can't do that, Shepard.”

So she can secure salarian help in the fight for Earth. So she can keep the krogan from cutting a bloody swath through anything left after the fight with the Reapers. So she can do everything and anything to save a million human lives every day that the monsters are on her planet.

“I don't have a choice here! Walk away, or I will fire.”

Wrex will never forgive her. (If he knows. He won't know. He can't.) Eve will never forgive her. She'll never forgive herself.

“Not your decision.” He stabs at the air with his finger. “Not your work. Not your cure! Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

_Why you do it, isn't it, Shepard? Make the tough calls. Live with what you've done. So nobody else has to._

“No time to argue. Cure dispersal imminent. Must counteract sabotage. Stop me if you must.”

He turns his back to her, moving with purpose. A clear shot at point-blank range. She do it with her eyes closed.

She can do it with her gun hand shaking.

_Take the shot-_

_-the name 'Shepard' will mean 'hero'-_

_-Kathleen Shepard, author of the second Krogan Rebellions-_

_-shoot two friends in the back, kill Wrex just a little slower-_

_-how many people die to give you a clean conscience-_

_-someone else might have gotten it wrong-_

_**-take the shot-**_

_-I MADE A MISTAKE_

She's almost missed the chance. Shepard steadies her hand, and takes a breath.


	9. Blue

2175, Oma Ker

Shepard is on her fifth drink of the evening, on her second hour off duty. So far every one of them has put her in a worse and worse mood. Maybe the next one will turn things around, but she's not especially hopeful.

Everyone else seems to be having a good time. Training with the turians is supposed to be a big honor; the brass seemed to act like she should be grateful for the chance. All she's felt, though, is the growing irritation at being surrounded by these lizards, a whole planet of them. 

She can't relax, she can't ease up, crowded with the spiky bird-monsters all around. All she can do is sit at a table and grind her teeth and watch the turians make nice with the marines, be sulkily silent at anyone who tries to talk to her, and generally try to take her mind off just how bad she and hers lost the day's exercises. Which would be easier if she just got up and left, but she's still here. 

_Because you're too stubborn to lose and too stupid to see that there's nothing to win._

Someone else is coming over, but it's not one of her people. It's one of them, one of the ugly bastards coming to chat. She shifts further away, back against the wall, curling her lip involuntarily at its approach.

“You the one they call 'Princess?'”

Shepard looks up with a scowl, and has another sip of her drink. Sets the glass down on the table, hard. “Some of the Marines call me that. You don't get to.”

It holds its claws up defensively, but even though she can't tell, she's pretty sure it's laughing at her. “Ease up there, alright? I-”

“You don't get to give me orders, either.”

It lowers its claws, and presses those mandibles together tight. “I was just coming over to say you did good today. If your commander tightened up your left flank a bit, you might've-”

“You definitely don't get to give me advice. If I want to hear a turian's tactical appraisal, I'll beat it out of you.”

There's an audience now. A few of the other marines, a few of the other turians. This is stupid. She's sober enough to know that. But the only way out now is to back down, and that's just not going to happen.

“You can try it, human.” It takes a few steps closer to her, standing across the table. Shoulders out, back straight. Looking big. Remarkably human. “The hell is your problem?”

Her cheeks are flushed, and she can't quite tell if she's embarrassed or drunk. “Well, just a minute ago, some ugly cuttlebone came over and started talking at me while I was just trying to enjoy my drink.”

The audience starts making noise. Jeers and laughs and calls. One of the marines—she can't tell who—puts a hand on her shoulder, and she shakes it off. She's just looking at the turian across the table, trying to keep looking casual while her moth waters and her heart pounds in her ears.

It leans over, very slowly, and without breaking eye contact, spits right into her drink.

And then the table's flipped and she's going at it with her fists, closing and twisting to get inside its reach, taking blows to her head and her stomach and keeping up, landing a solid left to its midsection and a right behind its crest and it's on the ground. There are hands pulling her away and cheering from the other marines, clasps on the shoulder and laughing and some of the laughing is from her. She'll catch hell for it, but right now there's blue blood on her knuckles and she feels like she could take on the universe.

2185, Omega

Shepard is crouched on the ground in a room full of bodies and rubble. There's blue blood on her hands and covering her hardsuit and a stinging in her eyes and she feels like either crawling into a hole or screaming until she can't make a sound.

Garrus is bleeding out, gasping through what's left of his face. Off the edge of the galaxy, and she found him in Omega of all places, and now he's going to die in front of her and it's not fair ( _it's never fair, why the hell should it ever be fair?_ ) and if he dies she'll be back among the enemy. Watching over her shoulder every minute because she couldn't save someone she could trust to watch her back.

_you know it's never fair_

The mercenary's gruff rumble coming from behind her. “He's not gonna make it.”

_he's wrong he has to be wrong_ “Taylor, get pressure on the wound. As much medigel as it takes to stop the bleeding.”

“Commander.” 

Shepard moves crouch at Taylor's side, shifting his bulk to get her hands under his armpits. “We're getting him to the Normandy. Massani, take the legs-”

“Shepard, he doesn't have a guddamn face. Look at it. Slow us down, is all, and if there's more of them out there, we're gonna end up worse for it. Call your Illusive Man and tell him this one's a bust.”

“Stow it. We need to get him to Chakwas. She can fix it.”

“Sweetheart, I got ten thousand credits says he doesn't-”

Shepard pulls her pistol from her hip and trains it on the old mercenary in one movement. To his credit, he doesn't flinch at the sight of a gun in his face, just narrows that one good eye staring right down the barrel. 

“You do not get to finish that sentence.”

Massani crosses his arms, but he doesn't take his eye off the gun. “This how you want to play it?”

_Do it. Zombie Cyborg Monster Shepard just found a friend, slipped up, and got him killed, why not rack up another body for the hell of it._ “That's how it is. You're being paid to follow my orders. So get his legs. And help me get him to Chakwas.”

There's another second ( _how many seconds do you think he has?_ ) and Massani shrugs, uncrosses his arms, and moves to take Garrus' legs. “Right you are. Only had to ask.”

She doesn't put her gun away until Massani's arms are full of limp turian legs, and she hefts him up. Back down the stairs, stepping over corpses and debris, while Garrus' ruined head lolls over her shoulder, wet bubbling every time he takes a breath.

_Please, Garrus, you have to make it. I can't do this alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I skipped this chapter when I posted the story. Editing it in where it belongs.


	10. Personal

2185, The Citadel

Shepard is hovering in place in a rented skycar, arms crossed, watching the C-Sec lights flash and the officers scurrying through the pavilion. Witnesses, technicians, the press. Shepard is watching the patterns, people in all species and colors swarming and moving in kaleidoscope patterns. In the middle, a black tarp, to give the recently deceased a little dignity.

There's nothing else to do until he arrives, so Shepard is watching the patterns, ripples in a pond from the stone she dropped right in the center. Another little bit of chaos left in her wake.

“How long can we stay here?” It's as much to break the silence as anything, turning toward Tali as the other woman goes over the feeds on her omni-tool.

“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.” Tali looks up, first to the ceiling, then back to Shepard. “The cameras here will keep showing an empty lot, but I had to scrub every camera on the block. They'll be looking.”

Tali's face, as always, is hidden, but her shoulders are slumped, and her voice is tired. Shepard hesitates, lips pursed, before she decides to speak.

“You don't approve.”

“Does it matter? It's done.”

Shepard exhales, slowly, looking at the woman. “Tali, you heard him. He wanted this.”

“What, you think you and Garrus did him a favor? He needed help, Shepard.”

“No. He needed to pay for what he did, and Garrus needed to be the one who did it.”

“Who killed him.” Tali places a hand on her faceplate, over her forehead. “ _Keelah_ , Shepard, this wasn't another firefight. This was murder. You two lured him here and murdered him. This was just revenge. And I helped you do it.”

“You're-” _Quiet, Shepard. Lying low, remember?_ “-you're goddamn right it was revenge. You think I'd have done anything else? For him, for Thane, for you? For any of you? Never mind _all_ of you.”

Tali's glowing eyes stare back from the rear seat. “Shepard, you heard him. If he hadn't told the mercs what they wanted to know, they would have killed him.”

The only noise is the gentle whirring of the skycar's engine, for a drawn-out moment. “Tali, if someone had you at gunpoint, and said your only chance was to turn on Garrus and me-”

“That's not-” 

“Would you?”

“Of course not! You...” Tali's eyes go down, and she wraps her arms around her own torso, looking like she's trying to curl into herself. “I'd die first, Shepard. You know that.”

“I know, Tali.” Beneath them, she sees a tall figure moving through the lot, head high, gait carefully casual, surreptitiously glancing around as he walks. A smile touches Shepard's face at the sight of him. She puts the engine into gear and starts to pull the skycar around to meet him.

2186, SSV Normandy SR-2

“So what is it?”

“That's why it's wrapped in the paper, Garrus. So you can't tell. What do you think it is?”

“Hmm.” They're in the armory of the _Normandy_ , tucked behind the shuttle. Garrus hefts the blocky parcel carefully, turning it over in his hands. “Forty kilos, or close to it. Compact.”

“Mm-hm.”

“So not food, or alcohol. Especially since I'm picking up a mass effect generator.”

“You can't use scans on a present, Garrus. That's cheating.”

“Then I'll just remember that it's you, and the only present you'd ever think to give your boyfriend-”

“Open the damn present, Vakarian.”

He runs one claw carefully down the messy line of wrapping paper, and starts peeling it off more carefully than she'd been when she put the paper on. She's gratified when, lucky guess or no lucky guess, his mandibles click in surprise.

“Shepard, this is-”

“An M-98 Widow anti-material rifle. Spent the whole night before the party modding it for you. But I thought you might want to calibrate it yourself. Before we pull in.” Her smile fades just a little, and she glances away from the sight of him, extending and retracting the rifle's barrel. “Want to make sure we're ready.”

“I love it.” He turns, she smiles again, and he sees through it. She hates that he sees through her, and she loves him for it anyway.

“You know,” he says, “there's going to be a whole fleet there. I think Hackett must have _someone_ else he could send in.”

“Nobody else who has EDI. Nobody else who can do what we do.” She shakes her head, meeting Garrus' blue eyes. “And even then, this is personal. I need to do this. Has to be me.”

Garrus puts one hand on her shoulder, and slings the rifle across his back. “Someone else might get it wrong?”

“You had ten names. I have fifty. And Thane.” She leans against the keel of his chest, and closes her eyes. “I need to be there. I need to break everything he's made. I need to see Cerberus scrubbed out of the galaxy. Like Toombs said. Maybe the screaming will stop.”

Garrus puts an arm around her waist, and pulls her in close. He lowers his head onto her right shoulder, and presses his mandibles against her cheek. 

His scars against hers.


	11. Hope

2177, Akuze

Flight Lieutenant Hiller is sitting at the controls to the shuttle, hovering over the LZ, looking at a lot of nothing in every direction. The planet is a dirtball, and one that's managed to swallow up every human being that's set foot on it. She shouldn't be here.

“Fifteen minutes, Dubai. Then I have to either park or fly, and I know which way I want to do it.”

“Roger that. Thought we caught something north-northeast, swing by before you pack it in.”

“Copy.” She brings the thrusters to life, sending the chunky bird up and over the next ridge, checking her instruments as she goes. “Looking clear here. Think we're going to have to call this one... hold on. Something.”

She checks and double checks the instruments, making sure she isn't chasing a ghost. Pulls up the display, focus exterior camera.

One figure, feet dragging through the sand. One arm is tight against the torso, the other one hanging at its side, holding a rifle that slides through its fingers and drops in the dirt. It's looking up and at her.

“Dubai, signal confirmed. We have one alive out here. Moving in for pick-up.”

“Copy that, Hiller. Bring her home.”

2170, Antirumgone

Marcus Shepard takes one deep breath, looking at what's left of the batarian camp. “Shepard here. All clear.”

“Rice here. Clear. Package is secured.”

“Copy. Get the shuttles on their way, and get the package ready for transport. I'm moving in.”

He walks past the bodies and crates and detritus of the pirate base, to the giant box in the center. Wong is working over the dead batarians, keeping them from whatever gods they have. Marcus touches the controls on the side of the box, links up his suit comm, and leaves Wong to it. They deserve worse.

“Can you hear me in there?” He adjusts the opacity on the ports, and he can see them.

People, colonists, packed in standing room in their own filth. They're dirty and they're scared, moving away from the doors of the crate, packing themselves even tighter. One in ten of them might be older than Kathy, staring at the window. They've learned enough not to expect anything good when someone talks to them.

“You don't have to be scared of me. I'm Lieutenant Marcus Shepard, with the Alliance. We're taking you home. These people, they're not going to be able to hurt you again. You're safe now.

“That's a promise.”

2186, Tuchanka

Shepard exhales, slowly, staring down the iron sights of the pistol.

Mordin smiles at her. The doors slide closed, and he starts to rocket up the side of the giant spire, toward the fire and explosions at the top.

Before he's out of sight, she can see him take one deep breath, with an expression she can barely recognize on his face.

Mordin Solus is at peace.

2186, Earth

There's a store in what's left of Madrid, where a half-dozen people with salvaged weapons are standing around a flickering vidcom, where they've started to catch the projection of a scarred woman's face. She's facing the camera, shoulders back, head high.

“If anyone's here, if anybody's listening, this is Commander Shepard speaking.”

A family, taking shelter in a lean-to outside of Bangkok, cluster around the image on their omni-tool.

“This message is being sent from ships in orbit where, twenty-five minutes ago, we engaged the Reaper forces blockading Earth.”

The headquarters of the Texas Resistance Army has come to a stop, everyone standing and watching the array of screens carrying the image.

“Ground forces are currently engaged on multiple fronts. This message is to anyone who's listening, anyone who's still fighting.”

Around the world, the message is picked up on raidios and vidcoms and broadcast stations, and sent to scattered armies, militias, civilians, refugees.

“You are not alone. You are not abandoned. You are not forgotten. Help is coming.”

“If anyone's here, if anybody's listening, this is Commander Shepard speaking. This message is being sent from ships in orbit where, thirty-five minutes ago, we engaged the Reaper forces blockading Earth...”


	12. Peace

2186, Earth

The first thing that comes is the sounds. Low beeping noises, regular and steady, a low buzz like one of Tali's drones, flitting at the edge of her awareness. It starts to fade, she starts to float back into the dark black haze, let it come over her like cool water and let her sink back down into-

_-no no keep back-_

_-up and at 'em, devildog! think you're getting paid to lie around-_

_-think she moved-_

_-arighty lighty leyo-_

_-can you hear me shepard-_

_-if i die in a combat zo-one-_

_-get chakwas-_

Everything feels heavy, like she's wading through mud, and she tries to grit her teeth and she tries to lift her head and she tries to slowly, slowly peel her eyelids apart.

The light is blinding and harsh, a mass of painful white pressing into her skull, broken up by a pair of dark shapes hovering above her. She squeezes her eyes shut, turns away from the light.

“Shepard? Shepard, can you hear me?”

“Oh, God. Oh God, Kathy.”

Voices. She knows them. Opens her eyes again, slowly, to take it in. “...Garrus? Mom?” Her voice is weak, crackling. Her mouth, her throat, so dry. 

Oh, God, _everything_ hurts-

“Shepard!” And he's there, right where he belongs, claws on her shoulders and faceplates at her neck, and right now she feels so weak that his embrace could break her in half but she'd rather it did than try to send him away. “Don't ever do that again.”

The room comes into focus slowly. She's in a hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and monitors and the machine hovering over her. Her mother is standing beside the bed, a fist in front of her mouth, eyes wet and smiling. And Garrus is beside her, arms across her shoulders, laughing or crying. An armed marine is standing at the door, slack-jawed.

Shepard is hungry and parched, and she hurts everywhere in that vague sense where she knows it hurts, but from a distance of drugs and exhaustion between her and the agony. She can feel that her hair is gone, she feels weaker than she ever has in her life. Her head is swimming in painkillers, but she knows she has to ask.

“Reapers?”

Garrus shakes his head. “Whatever you did up there, the Reapers are gone. Everywhere. Every soldier on the ground, every ship in their fleet, everywhere in the galaxy.” 

“You did it, Kathy.” Her mother's voice is choked, and if she didn't know better, Shepard would swear she saw a tear. “We won.”

“It's over.” Garrus pulls back, looking at her through his visor.

It takes her a minute to process those two words, such little things, but with them a pressure of years and pain and fear evaporates off her chest, setting down a weight that had come to feel as much a part of her as her own right arm. And then something breaks, and there are tears down Shepard's face, and she's crying for the first time in fifteen years. So she lets it go, and her body is being raked by big, ugly sobs, and she buries her face in Garrus' cowl. She puts a hand around him and holds on like an anchor, and he puts his talon on the back of her shaved head, and her mother sets an arm on her shoulder.

Right now, right here, she doesn't have to be The Commander. Kathleen Shepard can cry with the people she loves.

2161, Arcturus Station

She's sitting in bed, and now she's not afraid anymore, but her face is hot and there are tears in her eyes and she can't find the words to explain to her daddy that she's scared of monsters, because they're coming for her, she knows they are.

His hand is on her shoulder, big and warm, and he's laughing and now she feels even worse because she thinks he's laughing at her.

“Don't tell me monsters aren't real. They are. Monsters are real.”

“Kathy,” he says, still smiling. “My girl. Of course they are.”

And now she doesn't know what to say at all, she's just looking at him, and he reaches one of his rough hands to her cheeks to wipe away at the tears.

“The galaxy is full of monsters,” he says. “But you don't need to be afraid of them. Not ever.

“You're on Arcturus Station, love. You've got more ships and fighters and marines between you and the monsters than anywhere else. Your mom and dad, the people we work with, we're the ones who keep people safe from the monsters. We're the ones who make them go away.

“It's what we do.”


End file.
